Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
technological applications. The emergence of personal devices and the
accompanying access to the Internet have both accelerated this process. In Japan,
the year 2005 is regarded as the dawn of the broadband era. The broadband network
environment all over the nation was almost completed, and industries and
consumers were ready to connect to broadband Internet by that time.
Japan's network environment has another unique feature: the infrastructure of
mobile phones. The driving force behind the diffusion of mobile phones in the
country was the introduction of the i-mode service by NTT Docomo. This Internet
connection service enables users to almost fully access the Internet via their mobile
phones. It opened up unlimited access to the Internet via personal wireless devices
in Japan, resulting in the ubiquitous Japanese Internet environment and broadband
network.
The ubiquity of the Internet and the broadband network reached a new stage
when netbooks, tablet terminals, and smartphones were developed and introduced
by year 2010. Ubiquitous broadband became one feature of wireless mobile com-
munication networks. From 2010 through 2011, smartphones and devices, such as
the iPhone, iPad and those using the Android platform, demonstrated rapid pene-
tration in the market. At the same time, Social Network Services (SNSs), such as
Facebook and Twitter, became more popular because they can be accessed using
these mobile devices.
These phenomena paved the way for the stage of bi-directional communication
with broadband network. At this stage, a new situation occurred, in which “the
consumers of information” became “the producers of information.” This was not
expected at the stage of IT. Likewise, it is different because, at this stage, anybody
can become the producer of information. Thus, the concept of “the producers of
information” expanded to include those who used to be considered merely as
consumers.
The producers of information are those who actively upload their products to the
Web. For example, even though there is a limit of 140 words per tweet, the texts and
networks of re-tweets all add a huge amount of information. This is one of the
outcomes of the bi-directional communication network.
1.2.2 Review of Reponen et al. (2003)
In 2003, Reponen edited and published a topic entitled,
Information Technology
Enabled Global Customer Service
. This 16-chapter topic consists of 9 chapters of
theoretical articles and 7 chapters of cases. It is the very first topic to have the words
“Information Technology-Enabled Service” in the title. Since this topic is
published, almost decade has passed. We owe greatly to works of Reponen and
his colleague. It is the starting point and provides the basis for our discussion about
ITeS. Therefore, it is important to review their works. The following sections
present a review of the topic.
